Yesterday, I started a playthrough of the Zelda Collectors Disc that came with the Gamecube a few years ago. After plowing through the original LoZ, I lost power at my apartment, so my run through was abruptly put to a halt.

After debating on abandoning ship, I ended up retreating to the bedroom. Most of the bad snow and ice had passed here, so I figured it was a matter of time. Boy, was I wrong.

Three hours passed. After the first 45 minutes, I realized that I actually could continue my playthrough on my DS because I was dumb enough to buy the NES series carts on the GBA. I was going to play Zelda II: The Adventure of link on a handheld.

This is the black sheep of the main series and it has been discussed at length including a pretty good AVGN episode.

I just don't buy it. This game is flawed in a lot of places and in addition to those annoyances, this game can be balls hard. Add in the fact that there are several places in this game that you have absolutely no clue in what to do.

It was a big chance in possibly throwing a game that sold so well under the bus in lieu of something completely different. While that may sound like some novel to modern game developers, in the early NES era it wasn't. Where this game falls short is that the system wasn't tweaked and that the developers probably thought that the difficulty curve was right on the money. Whoops.

You will grind in this game a ton. If you lose your life midway through leveling up, sorry about your luck. That counter goes back to zero. Killing something doesn't always grant you experience. If it drops an item, you get nothing for killing it. Picking up an item? You aren't immune and you will still get hit because the game keeps going on despite your inability to move. Your health replenishment is few and far between. This game is brutal.

But its fun and not in a masochistic kind of way. When my parents bought this game for me, I was determined to beat it. Every time I heard the Gannon laugh, I refocused and put on my shitkickers and went to work.

This game will try your patience and it can be cheap. Most likely, you will need a walkthrough, especially once you reach the second half of the game. There are just too many random things that you need to find that the game does no favors for you.

I was reminded of this last night when i was in bed with my DS. Once I hit Death Mountain, I had the phone out for a bit for the map. That place can be brutal and I was pressed for time.

Still, I enjoyed my time with this game and I ended up beating it fairly quickly last night. There isn't a lot left to the imagination once you know where things are here. Its just not that kind of game. I say most of my time was spent grinding while little time was used for the objectives.

If you are younger, and are a Zelda fan, give this a run. Its a good game and its a difficult challenge. I'm still not convinced that this was their best idea at the time and that maybe something else was in the pipe, but it worked. read

Its cold and miserable here in southern Missouri today, thus I need to entertain myself while we still have power.

I pulled out my old Gamecube, which was a pain to begin with. I have to go through the box of cords to find an A/V cable (too poor for component) and the power adapter. I also found the appropriate Wavebird hook-ups because my couch holds much more comfort than the wooden floors of my apartment.

I'm going to do a timed run on the original LoZ first. This won't be a speedrun of sorts, but I just want to know how long it will take me to get through this.

I'll post updates as i go along and we will see how this goes. I also won't be using any walkthroughs or anything because I haven't beat OoT or MM yet (!) I know that may limit how much i get done in two days. The point is that I want to have fun and have a game experience that I missed out on.

Not a quick run and I've died twice (!!!). Once was from the top of the map to get back down quick and the other was my own idiotic stupidity in Labyrinth 2.

I'm going to make my way over to Level 4, blow through that and head south and east after I get he raft to get that heart container hanging out over there. Hopefully, I'll have enough Rupees to pick up the blue ring by then.

There are only four overworld hearts right? Four or five screens from the start, the trees near levels one, the lone rock mountain northwest of lvl 2 and the raft part on the far left side right?

Update 2: 8:02 p.m.

Four and five are done and in the books. Level 4 is a pain because there is absolutely nothing in there that gives you anything to fill up your hearts.

Went and grabbed the other TWO overworld heart containers, which they were right by each other. One was the Raft castle and the other was two screens below that. Funny how your memory kicks in like that.

I've already grabbed the master sword and I'm beating level seven while I'm over here. Just a shade under two hours thus far. I took a break to cook dinner real quick and walk my dog.

Also, I've started in on the beer. This might get fun once we hit Link's Adventure.

Edit 3: 9:08 p.m.

I've lost power. Thank god for my UPS. I'm going to wait this one out and see what happens. My apartment is electric, so this might be a short stay.

I was on level 9 and was able to save thanks to the UPS.

Thanks to all for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. Sorry, I thought this would be much more interesting, but I at least had fun playing tonight. Hopefully the power kicks back on and I can get to cracking on Links Adventure. read

So it looks like I am going to be snowed/iced in for the next couple of days and I think I'm going to do a series playthrough.

I've got the Zelda grey disc that came with the gamecube preorder a few years ago to take care of Zelda/2/OoT/MM and instead of LTTP, I'm think of doing a LTTP: Parallel Worlds thrown in, which I never played.

Possible to do in two days?

I've never played through MM and this would be my first run at PW. I'm a bit older (31) and I wasn't a huge N64 guy at the time. read

Double point blog today that I assume will probably be ridiculed to no end. I'm going to touch on two things that most of the destructoid community can't stand: Fraternities and Madden.

I'm still green to the community but I don't get it at all. Was there a meeting held behind closed doors at E3 that everyone just agreed to hate Fraternities, Halo, Sports Games and other FPS games not named CounterStrike? Are people really stuck into that kind of stereotypical lock and load mentality that they really can't try someone else's shoes for a session?

I could relate a ton of stories at my college fraternity house about gaming life. Things like us pooling our money together to get a Cube, four controllers and a copy of SSMB on the day it came out. Or how our school senate pushed for a campus gaming league to promote new social activities? Or wasting a slow saturday afternoon setting up an eight person live Madden fantasy draft for fun? Maybe it was the time that four of us became obsessed with Final Fantasy Tactics challenges for the better part of a semester? Games are the rule, not the exception, with almost every college student.

Games aren't played with the amount of collars you have popped on your shirt or with the 12 pack of natty you just shotguned. Games are playing with the controller and your mind and as much as the "hardcore" community would like the think themselves as the penultimate in gaming culture, there isn't much difference between them at the guy wearing his letters. It shouldn't be a crime to get excited for a sports game just as it shouldn't be wrong to get excited for the umpteenth million release (or in this case RE-release) of a Final Fantasy game. Give me a fucking break if you really think its that different.

Ive been a card-carrying member of both subcultures for a long time and seeing the stereotypes thrown around both are just plain ignorant. If someone likes a game series and it isn't your particular brand of Whiskey, shut the fuck up right there and don't bother speaking for an hour until you can come up with something that makes you seem like you have half a brain.

Madden comes out Tuesday. It sure does, by george. There's also a demo up on the marketplace. Checked it out yet? Have you already bitched about it somewhere without playing it? Good chance that many of us already have. Go ahead and bitch about EA not fixing slider bugs from year to year or finding something else completely new to mess up. Ride EA for all their worth because they certainly deserve every bit of criticism that can be blogged about for a year. Guys! Don't put them bats down yet, there's still some life in that old horse!

I'm still excited for it though. Even though the game sometimes has all the charm of a bathroom at a truckstop, I still smile over some of the fun that I know is coming. I've got a group of friends heading over Tuesday afternoon and we are firing up the grill, filling the coolers and we are going to play some simulated football! read

The company that defined my childhood has become a marriage that neither party is happy with each other, but still codependent on. As long as she has my money to go shopping during the day, relative peace is kept on the homefront.

The 'cube made me feel a little dead on the inside after putting up with complete bull headed tactics of the 64. Nintendo took the few good ideas that they had in the Project Reality era and ran them into the ground and THEN pissed on the remains.

Every major title looks and plays like the same damn game! 3D world, behind the shoulder auto-follow camera that you prayed didnt change at the worst possible time (see also: Ninja Gaiden), bad clipping and face-palming decisions that made little sense. Nintendo continued their heavy handed tactics and dictated to their developers how things were going to be in a time that the industry was changing. During the era, you had Sony, Nintendo, Sega and a few other also-rans that were giving developers real options for the first time in gaming history. There had to be an open dialogue between the first party and the third party to make sure that the gamer was getting the best experience possible. Instead, Nintendo limited access to their developers kits until the end of the console's lifespan and this only helped complicate a machine that had hardware that was held together by wishes, rubber bands and magic fairy dust.

The big N also has this really dangerous habit of throwing the bird to the rest of the industry at any time that they so feel like it. They don't understand that other companies can and do have good ideas.

Lets compare shall we?

vs

Yes, im aware that this was the second psx controller. At least that fucker didnt give me Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Which one of these made more sense? This was a classic example of Nintendo being different almost for the sake of being different. The 64 controller was terrible and had only one good use. The same thing happend with the Cube. Weird controller and a proprietary disc format which ended biting them in the ass. Online support? Forget it. Apparently gamers didn't want it.

I still bought my Wii and i share the sentiment that most everyone else does. The thing still stinks to hell of the Big N being smarmy when they know that they can't do that anymore. Congrats on installing a user base for the first time in ten years... NOW DO SOMETHING WITH IT!!! Surprise us! Motivate us! INSPIRE US!!! Look at what other companies are doing well and make it better. Listen to your community and open a dialogue with them again and jump back into the race. It really is ok to be an alternative to the Coke and Pepsi war going on but it doesnt mean you have to make a TAB cola. Be the fuckin' Dr. Pepper for once. read

My name is Ryan. Im a twentysomething gamer living in the midwest where I dabble in excessive drinking, DJ'ing and Convergent Media.

When i first hit that power button and that grey box lit up to red, i knew I was home. Actually, it was the first time i yanked that game out in sheer frustration after seeing my Zelda save erased by the complete "fuck you" of childhood gaming frustration: the gray screen of almost certain doom. Passive-Aggressive was in my vocabulary at a very young age.

Im still in love with the games of my childhood and the amazement of games from this era still put me in awe. When I walk by a display promoting this year's "it" game, I still get that little feeling inside that is turned like jack-in-the-box waiting to burst and bloom.

I am using this blog as a springboard into Gaming (big G. I know!) and writing. I will be finding a job in my field within the next year (Think backpack journalism or "How you get all those pretty little movies and tidbits up on your computer screen) and this is a field that show so much promise for fostering that type of media growth.

Deep down, Im pretty sure I still want to geek out and just write about games.

This blog will center around gaming commentary both in the retro and present tense. I have been toying around with rolling out a podcast, which Id like to assemble a team for that since solo podcasting is masturbatory. read